Belarusian Political Scientist Anatoly Kotov Disappeared In Turkey
- 27.08.2025, 13:53
He's been out of contact for six days.
A former employee of Lukashenka's administration, political scientist, head of the international department of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund Anatoli Kotov disappeared in Turkey. On August 21, he flew from Warsaw to Turkey. In the evening of the same day he stopped communicating.
Family and friends of Anatoli Kotov appealed to the Polish and Turkish police, contacted local human rights organizations, as well as the Polish diplomatic missions in Istanbul, as the political scientist received refugee status in this country.
Before his flight to Turkey, Kotov excused himself at the event agency Terra Group, where he had been working recently, but did not say what his plans were.
The main versions of the disappearance are detention by the Turkish authorities through Interpol and illegal removal from the country by the Belarusian security services. In Belarus, Anatoly Kotov was sentenced to 12 years in prison because he switched to opposition to the government in August 2020.
In the early 2000s, Anatoly Kotov worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2006 to 2015, he held various positions at the Belarusian Embassy in Poland, rising from third secretary to senior advisor to the ambassador.
In 2015, he returned to Minsk, where he moved from the Foreign Ministry to work at the National Olympic Committee, which at the time was personally headed by Alexander Lukashenko. Kotov first worked there as a leading specialist, but soon took the position of secretary general.
Then worked in Lukashenko's administration, where he took the position of deputy head of the department of financing state bodies of the Main Financial Directorate of the dictator's administration.
On August 18, 2020, Kotov retired from Lukashenko's administration, the same day he signed an open letter of Belarusian athletes who spoke out against election fraud and condemned violence by the security forces He then moved to Warsaw. Recently, he cooperated with the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund.